“It’s very unusual for West Mayfield in Pennsylvania,” said another neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s amazing.”

Yes, but not all that rare, said Curt Pesanka, horticulturalist with Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, especially if it’s a cold-hardy plant like the Musa basjoo.

Though often referred to as a banana tree, Pesanka said bananas are actually tropical plants.

Hundreds of banana cultivars are grown around the world. Some can grow here, but it’s “very uncommon,” according to staff at Missouri Botanical Garden’s Kemper Center for Home Gardening, “because it’s typically not grown that far north due to the cooler temperatures. ... Most bananas are only winter hardy from zone 7-10.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture divides the country into zones to give gardeners a better idea as to which plants are most likely to thrive. Zones are based on average minimum winter temperatures. Beaver County is in zone 6 (lowest average temperature of minus 10 degrees).

The Kemper Center added that “it may be uncommon for gardeners in this area to see a flower or fruit set” due to the interruption of winter.

Phipps and the Kemper Center were provided photos of Gant’s banana plant to determine its cultivar, but neither could definitively identify its species from pictures alone.

However, the Kemper Center said it’s in the genus Musa.

In tropical regions, bananas need an uninterrupted growing season of nine to 15 months or longer to produce fruit, depending on the cultivar, the Kemper Center said.

“During the growing time, temperatures cannot drop below 57 (degrees) for any extended time,” the center said, and here in Pennsylvania, it may take years before the plant produces fruit.

Friend Tonya Mention of Ambridge gave Gant a sucker — a cutting from the plant’s rhizome root — which she planted in soil at her former home in Beaver Falls. Never, however, did it fruit.

Two years ago, she moved to West Mayfield and brought “babies” (offshoots) with her to plant.

“The sun is very hot right here in the front of the house,” she said, so much so that she has to keep her living room curtain closed to keep the room cool. “It was so hot this year. That’s what I believe did it — hot and we had a real rainy season this year.”

It helps that she waters and feeds the banana plant with Miracle-Gro.

Just after Mother’s Day, Gant digs a large hole and plants a sucker that produces a trunk-like pseudostem, which grows quickly.

By October’s end before the first frost, she cuts back the trunk, pulls out the root and saws pups from the mother corm. Everything is discarded except for the pups, which she pots and overwinters in her basement until ready to plant the next spring.

“You can’t leave it in the ground,” she said. “It (winter) would kill the plant. That’s why I take it out of the ground. This isn’t the right climate for a banana tree” — all the more credit to Gant and Mother Nature that her plant fruited.

She pulled an immature green banana — no more than 4 to 5 inches long — from the tree and split its peel with a knife.

The creamy yellow flesh yielded a sweet scent, but was far from ripe.

Gant hoped she’d be able to eat one, “but I don’t think,” she said, realizing there’s not enough time left for the fruit to mature.

Had there been time, she would have “fried the bananas, put some caramel on it and then put two scoops of ice cream on the side. That’s what I would have done.”